Paulsen, Nina. "German-Russian Under Monarchy and Dictatorship: HFDR Publishes a new Volume of the Series 'Russland-Deutsch Zeitgeschichte'." Volk auf dem Weg, December 2005, 11.

Translation from the original German text to American
English by Alex Herzog, Boulder, Colorado

"Historical truth does not recognize boundaries, does not
recognize
nationalities, does not recognize nations. It must remain objective!"
A serious
attempt to pursue this motto by the publicist, Joachim Feist, is
made in Volume
4 of the series "Russland-Deutsche Zeitgeschichte [Contemporary
German-Russian History]" (2004-2005 Edition) recently published
by the Historische
Forschungsverein der Deustchen aus Russland [Historical Research
Society for
Germans from Russia].

By means of fifteen historical articles, an attempt is made to
allow
differing views and various results of research into Tsarist, Soviet,
and
post-Soviet eras to be expressed. As the book's subtitle indicates,
its content
provides a bridge across 200 years of German-Russian history under
monarchy and
dictatorship.

The HFDR, founded six years ago, and its chair, Anton Bosch, have
dedicated
themselves to delve into unfamiliar, unresearched, contentious,
or even dark
questions or topics concerning German-Russian history. The new volume
pursues this objective totally. In their contemporary historical
articles,
researchers introduced therein remain firmly grounded on historical
facts. They
attempt to keep or to explain contemporary history of the Germans
from Russia in
their respective epochs just as it occurred at the time.

A portion of the articles provides realistic glimpses into the
life and work of certain personalities of German-Russian descent
who made significant contributions to historical developments. (Author
Anton Bosch states:) Fully representative of this is the life and
work of Baroness Barbara Juliana von Kruedener, a 19th-Century writer
and preacher through whose help and private wealth around 5,500
"Chiliasts" from Wuerttemberg, resettled in the Black
Sea region between 1815 and 1818.

The Ukrainian music researcher and critic Grigoriy Hansburg wrests
from
total oblivion the gifted poet Elisabeth Kuhlmann (1808 - 1824),
who was born
into a German professional officer's family in St. Petersburg. This
poet
actually shows up historically mainly through the music of Robert
Schumann, who was
inspired by Kuhlmann's poetry and set several of her poems to music.

A new edition of the travel experiences of Joseph Aloisius Kessler,
Bishop
of Tiraspol-Saratov, who was born on the Volga in 1962, provides
a glimpse
into the tragic history of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia preceding
World
War II. An article by Natalya Rublyova also has a cleric as its
central focus
-- Michael Koehler (1897 - 1983), a priest of the Tiraspol Diocese.

Hilda Riss presents the lives and works of two German-Russian scholars
from
Crimea. Peter Koeppen (1793 - 1864) left a permanent mark as a geographer,
statistician, ethnographer, philologue, and bibliographer; and Dr.
Leopold
Gross (1925 - 2002) achieved, thanks to his talents and thirst for
knowledge, a
shining career as scienteist in general physics and in the
chemcial-photographic industry.

The interaction between German-Russian and Soviets, too, is traditionally
part of the research work of the HFDR. In this case, Anton Bosch's
painstaking
research taps into the suspenseful history -- previously not familiar
to the
broad public -- of two Neptune fountains: the original located on
the
grounds of the Peterhof at St. Petersburg, and its copy in the City
Park of
Nuremberg.

German-Russians have always been completely at the mercy of merciless
political events in both countries. Especially instructive in this
context is the
perspective of sober and moving diary excerpts "Auszug aus
der Heimat [Moving
from my Home]" by Walter Hornbach, who depicts in gripping
descriptions the
loss of his home during the spring of 1944. Waldemar Schmidt presents
glimpses into the barely researched topic of German-Russians' pre-Revolution
emigration movement to East Africa, and into its significance for
Germany's
colonial policies.

Viktor Diesendorf and Johannes Herber display the history of
Katharinenstadt-Baronsk-Yekaterinograd-Marxstadt-Marx, one of the
largest colonies
on the
Volga. Just a look at the changing names hints at how political
events
occurred thick and fast.

Albert Fuetterer, originally from South Ukraine, reports on two
Christmases:
one (1945) as an American prisoner of war and another (1946) in
an NKVD camp
in Soviet Uzbekistan.

Three further topics provide documentation on Soviet era history
and
describe the wretched existence of Germans in the then Soviet Union.
Dr. Viktor
Bruhl describes anti-German policies and practices between 1934
and 1955 within
German settlements in Siberia.

Dr. Viktor Krieger compares things that seem incomparable at first
glance:
the formation of a national cadre [Kazakhs] in Kazakhstan and [Germans]
in the
Republic of Volga-Germans. Among other things, he points out that
the
long-term wave of massive activities involving ideological influencing
effectively
had similar consequences in both cases.

A biography of Emma Welsch (90) of Nuremberg, rendered in authentic
language
by Kurt Reinelt, proves that family, faith, and mother tongue constituted
the actual home for the German-Russians in exile.

Of course, not missing in this almanac is an instructive glimpse
into the
sensibilities of Germans from Russia now in their historical home
country of
Germany. Maria Savoskul, a young Russian historian from Moscow,
describes for
the reader the problem of finding oneself and the related problems
of the
various phases involved in integration of the Aussiedler in this
country.

Our appreciation is extended to Alex Herzog for translation
of this article.